quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

okay, to be fair, north dakota population is rising slowly to 1930 levels:

1870

2,405

—

1880

36,909

1,434.7%

1890

190,983

417.4%

1900

319,146

67.1%

1910

577,056

80.8%

1920

646,872

12.1%

1930

680,845

5.3%

1940

641,935

−5.7%

1950

619,636

−3.5%

1960

632,446

2.1%

1970

617,761

−2.3%

1980

652,717

5.7%

1990

638,800

−2.1%

2000

642,200

0.5%

2010

672,591

4.7%

ppl's ability to construct a narrative that absolves them from any responsibility or need to think systemically is p amazing

and the reason, apparently, for the rise in north dakota population is the "oil-shale field" boom. which sounds lovely.

as paul krugman mentioned in some blog post the other day, the # of new jobs created in california since 2009 > the entire adult population of north dakota

it also sounds like something that young people SHOULD be flocking to. the oil-shale fields of north dakota.

lol oil projects arent really huge job creators

^^ the words of a guy who doesn't like tom joad

I think I did the math when I was having this argument w/ euler but the amount of people who need to move to north dakota to turn 3% unemployment to 8% is really *not that many*

this guy actually worked in the white house. doing stuff there. this is a government think tank brain trust economist from harvard. he gets paid money to think. and he runs a zillion dollar hedge fund. there is nothing he can't do.

yeah, i was gonna say, doesn't take much to boost numbers in ND.

nbd, nd has ~27% as many ppl as live in brooklyn

those ppl are all fucking slack-ass hipsters tho, so

if we make north dakota the new williamsburg we can solve a lot of problems

'oh yeah I work in the oil fields as a freelancer, starting my own band of miners'

what's really amazing is that someone at the NYT thought that this poorly-thought-out grab-bag of lazy, smug opinions was actually worth publishing. the NYT used to be known as "the paper of record," wasn't it? does this shit reflect staffers' opinions about allegedly shiftless young 'uns, were they blown away by this jackass's "impressive" credentials?!? God help us in either case.

is north dakota ready for orthodox brooklyn jews? well they'd better be, because that's where the action is in 2012

i tried to read this guy's woody allen movie review and i couldn't believe it was written by someone over the age of 17.

"This sounds like the same noble savage fantasy that’s made the rounds of literature ever since Jean Jacques Rousseau. The jungle and the farm are noble. The city and “civilization” are corrupting. Contrast Tarzan with Dorian Gray. In Tarzan immoral Londoners deceive the innocent ape-man, who knows more about honesty and decency than they. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the urban and urbane Dorian is a selfish, immoral monster. Clearly, he’d spent too much time in the civilized world and not enough time swinging from the trees in the jungle. These depictions are fantasies, not just because they are written by fiction writers. They are fantasies because crime rates are lower among city-dwellers than among primitives. Murder rates in Europe today are about one-tenth as high as in 1300AD, when just about everyone lived on the farm. As societies have become more focused on trade, commerce, and capitalism, they have become less violent, not more. In ancient burial grounds for primitive people, between 20-50 percent of the skeletons appear to have been bludgeoned to death. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby falls into the same fantasy camp as Tarzan."

http://www.toddbuchholz.com/archives/713

this guy taught at harvard? is his biography on that webpage actually real? does he actually live in his moms' basement? i'm skeptical...

"Some Occupy protestors wave posters, whiskey and hypodermic needles. Others clutch iPads, Kindles and Nooks. I wonder how many are reading The Great Gatsby."

all his stuff really belongs on that stuff you read that sounds like an onion headline thread.

what's really amazing is that someone at the NYT thought that this poorly-thought-out grab-bag of lazy, smug opinions was actually worth publishing. the NYT used to be known as "the paper of record," wasn't it? does this shit reflect staffers' opinions about allegedly shiftless young 'uns, were they blown away by this jackass's "impressive" credentials?!? God help us in either case.

― kurwa mać (Polish for "long life") (Eisbaer), Sunday, March 11, 2012 9:53 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

my theory is that they are giving this guy enough rope

I eagerly await artisanal oil hand-extracted from local oil shale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Lk4JhidxY

the weirdest thing is the springsteen bits tho - born to run was responsible for the amazing prosperity of the 70s...but then people heard tom joad in the 90s and boy was that a bleak decade.

Hoopleheads

this one reminds me of sctv in a way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDnb-BVb8V8&feature=related

the NYT also publishes tom friedman, david brooks, Goldman Sachs apologist Andrew Ross Sorkin = there ARE people there who are clueless enough to take this Todd Buchholz fellow seriously. (paul krugman and nick kristoff are aberrations.)

yeah I don't think you need a theory for why they printed this guy, the nyt prints stupid shit each and every day

they really do.

there are people who actually take david brooks seriously. real people who are alive right now on earth.

Notice how popular the prefix "i" has become among young people. A Nickelodeon TV show called "iCarly" has ranked first in the ratings among tweens. The term has morphed from a precise descriptor of self to an all purpose modifier that stresses the new digital frontier. Fortunately, societies that emphasize technology and creativity are likely to thrive.
The American company Apple was instrumental in this craze with their iPod, iPhone, and iPad products. Apple's late founder was Steve Jobs, whose very name shows us that today's younger generation is obsessed with jobs.

unassailable rebuttal

also, dude missed another point of grapes of wrath -- the Joads et al moved out to California only b/c they literally had NOTHING in Oklahoma any more, INCLUDING any sort of community or social network (all of those other Okies moving to California who used to be their neighbors, fellow congregants, etc.) which others upthread already mentioned ... did this guy even bother to take Sociology 101 whilst at Harvard?!?

omg I DIED

The whole ending of Grapes of Wrath is a kind of ironic commentary on the false hope of the mentality this guy is espousing.

i died otm as ever

https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net/profile_images/1325464255/tgb.headshotnew.reduced_reasonably_small.jpg

im trying to formulate a thought abt this but i cant get past the fact that someone thinks moving to north dakota is a solution to anything

even if somebody really wanted to move to north dakota I'm not sure I'd recommend moving to north dakota as being the right solution

real talk

someone get xhuxk klosterman on the phone

I didn't know where else to put this, story is from readwriteweb via NYT but um....whaaaaat the fuck:

http://m.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_in_a_nutshell_homeless_people_as_hotspots.php

ha i almost posted that here too

seriously I am just O_o

haha ok to make it legal heres the sort of actual nyt on the topic http://nytsxsw.tumblr.com/post/19145988299/getting-a-decent-data-connection-at-sxsw-can-be-a

its too ridiculous i cant even be mad

Mr Veg thinks it's funny and I am still kinda speechless

if someone dropped a bomb on sxsw the world would just carry on

yeah I wd be okay with that

currently: seeking employment as a human hotspot